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Release Candidate
Important Notice
Request for Comments
OWASP plans to release the final public release of the OWASP Top 10 - 2013 in April or May 2013 after a public comment period ending March 30, 2013. This release of the OWASP Top 10 marks this projects tenth year of raising awareness of the importance of application security risks. This release follows the 2010 updates focus on risk, detailing the threats, attacks, weaknesses, security controls, technical impacts, and business impacts associated with each risk. Using this approach, we believe this provides a model for how organizations can think beyond the ten risks here and figure out the most important risks that their applications create for their business. Following the final publication of the OWASP Top 10 - 2013, the collaborative work of the OWASP community will continue with updates to supporting documents including the OWASP wiki, OWASP Developers Guide, OWASP Testing Guide, OWASP Code Review Guide, and the OWASP Prevention Cheat Sheet Series. Constructive comments on this OWASP Top 10 - 2013 Release Candidate should be forwarded via email to OWASP-TopTen@lists.owasp.org. Private comments may be sent to dave.wichers@owasp.org. Anonymous comments are welcome. All non-private comments will be catalogued and published at the same time as the final public release. Comments recommending changes to the items listed in the Top 10 should include a complete suggested list of 10 items, along with a rationale for any changes. All comments should indicate the specific relevant page and section. Your feedback is critical to the continued success of the OWASP Top 10 Project. Thank you all for your dedication to improving the security of the worlds software for everyone. Jeff Williams, OWASP Top 10 Project Creator and Coauthor Dave Wichers, OWASP Top 10 Project Lead
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Foreword
About OWASP
About OWASP
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is an open community dedicated to enabling organizations to develop, purchase, and maintain applications that can be trusted. At OWASP youll find free and open Application security tools and standards Complete books on application security testing, secure code development, and security code review Standard security controls and libraries Local chapters worldwide Cutting edge research Extensive conferences worldwide Mailing lists And more all at www.owasp.org/ Including: www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10 All of the OWASP tools, documents, forums, and chapters are free and open to anyone interested in improving application security. We advocate approaching application security as a people, process, and technology problem, because the most effective approaches to application security require improvements in all of these areas.
Insecure software is undermining our financial, healthcare, defense, energy, and other critical infrastructure. As our digital infrastructure gets increasingly complex and interconnected, the difficulty of achieving application security increases exponentially. We can no longer afford to tolerate relatively simple security problems like those presented in this OWASP Top 10.
The goal of the Top 10 project is to raise awareness about application security by identifying some of the most critical risks facing organizations. The Top 10 project is referenced by many standards, books, tools, and organizations, including MITRE, PCI DSS, DISA, FTC, and many more. This release of the OWASP Top 10 marks this projects eleventh year of raising awareness of the importance of application security risks. The OWASP Top 10 was first released in 2003, with minor updates in 2004 and 2007. The 2010 version was revamped to prioritize by risk, not just prevalence. This 2013 edition follows the same approach. We encourage you to use the Top 10 to get your organization started with application security. Developers can learn from the mistakes of other organizations. Executives should start thinking about how to manage the risk that software applications create in their enterprise.
In the long term, we encourage you to create an application security program that is compatible with your culture and technology. These programs come in all shapes and sizes, and you should avoid attempting to do everything in a process model. Instead, leverage your existing organizations strengths and measure what works for you. We hope that the OWASP Top 10 is useful to your application security efforts. Please dont hesitate to contact OWASP with your questions, comments, and ideas, either publicly to owasp-topten@lists.owasp.org or privately to dave.wichers@owasp.org.
OWASP is a new kind of organization. Our freedom from commercial pressures allows us to provide unbiased, practical, cost-effective information about application security. OWASP is not affiliated with any technology company, although we support the informed use of commercial security technology. Similar to many open-source software projects, OWASP produces many types of materials in a collaborative, open way.
The OWASP Foundation is the non-profit entity that ensures the projects long-term success. Almost everyone associated with OWASP is a volunteer, including the OWASP Board, Global Committees, Chapter Leaders, Project Leaders, and project members. We support innovative security research with grants and infrastructure. Come join us!
I
Welcome
Introduction
Welcome to the OWASP Top 10 2013! This update broadens one of categories from the 2010 version to be more inclusive of common, important vulnerabilities, and reorders some of the others based on changing prevalence data. It also brings component security into the spotlight by creating a specific category for this risk, pulling it out of the obscurity of the fine print of the 2010 risk A6: Security Misconfiguration. The OWASP Top 10 is based on risk data from 8 firms that specialize in application security, including 4 consulting companies and 4 tool vendors (2 static and 2 dynamic). This data spans over 500,000 vulnerabilities across hundreds of organizations and thousands of applications. The Top 10 items are selected and prioritized according to this prevalence data, in combination with consensus estimates of exploitability, detectability, and impact estimates. The primary aim of the OWASP Top 10 is to educate developers, designers, architects, managers, and organizations about the consequences of the most important web application security weaknesses. The Top 10 provides basic techniques to protect against these high risk problem areas and also provides guidance on where to go from here.
Warnings
Dont stop at 10. There are hundreds of issues that could affect the overall security of a web application as discussed in the OWASP Developers Guide. This is essential reading for anyone developing web applications today. Guidance on how to effectively find vulnerabilities in web applications are provided in the OWASP Testing Guide and OWASP Code Review Guide, which have both been significantly updated since the previous release of the OWASP Top 10. Constant change. This Top 10 will continue to change. Even without changing a single line of your applications code, you may become vulnerable as new flaws are discovered. Please review the advice at the end of the Top 10 in Whats Next For Developers, Verifiers, and Organizations for more information. Think positive. When youre ready to stop chasing vulnerabilities and focus on establishing strong application security controls, OWASP has produced the Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) as a guide to organizations and application reviewers on what to verify. Use tools wisely. Security vulnerabilities can be quite complex and buried in mountains of code. In many cases, the most cost-effective approach for finding and eliminating these weaknesses is human experts armed with good tools. Push left. Focus on making security an integral part of your culture throughout your development organization. Find out more in the Open Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) and the Rugged Handbook.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Aspect Security for initiating, leading, and updating the OWASP Top 10 since its inception in 2003, and to its primary authors: Jeff Williams and Dave Wichers.
Wed like to thank those organizations that contributed their vulnerability prevalence data to support the 2013 update: Aspect Security HP (Results for both Fortify and WebInspect) Minded Security Softtek TrustWave Veracode Statistics WhiteHat Security Inc. Statistics
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Release Notes
2) Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) moved down in prevalence based on our data set from 2010-A5 to 2013-A8. We believe this is because CSRF has been in the OWASP Top 10 for 6 years, and organizations and framework developers have focused on it enough to significantly reduce the number of CSRF vulnerabilities in real world applications.
3) We broadened Failure to Restrict URL Access from the 2010 OWASP Top 10 to be more inclusive: + 2010-A8: Failure to Restrict URL Access is now 2013-A7: Missing Function Level Access Control to cover all of function level access control. There are many ways to specify which function is being accessed, not just the URL.
4) We merged and broadened 2010-A7 & 2010-A9 to CREATE: 2013-A6: Sensitive Data Exposure: This new category was created by merging 2010-A7 Insecure Cryptographic Storage & 2010-A9 - Insufficient Transport Layer Protection, plus adding browser side sensitive data risks as well. This new category covers sensitive data protection (other than access control which is covered by 2013-A4 and 2013-A7) from the moment sensitive data is provided by the user, sent to and stored within the application, and then sent back to the browser again.
5) We added: 2013-A9: Using Known Vulnerable Components: + This issue was mentioned as part of 2010-A6 Security Misconfiguration, but now deserves a category in its own right as the growth and depth of component based development has significantly increased the risk of using known vulnerable components.
Risk
Threat Agents
Sometimes, these paths are trivial to find and exploit and sometimes they are extremely difficult. Similarly, the harm that is caused may range from nothing, all the way through putting you out of business. To determine the risk to your organization, you can evaluate the likelihood associated with each threat agent, attack vector, and security weakness and combine it with an estimate of the technical and business impact to your organization. Together, these factors determine the overall risk.
Whats My Risk?
The OWASP Top 10 focuses on identifying the most serious risks for a broad array of organizations. For each of these risks, we provide generic information about likelihood and technical impact using the following simple ratings scheme, which is based on the OWASP Risk Rating Methodology.
Threat Agent Attack Vector Easy Weakness Prevalence Widespread Common Uncommon Weakness Detectability Easy Average Difficult Technical Impact Severe Moderate Minor Business Impact
References
OWASP
OWASP Risk Rating Methodology Article on Threat/Risk Modeling
External
FAIR Information Risk Framework Microsoft Threat Modeling (STRIDE and DREAD)
Average Difficult
Only you know the specifics of your environment and your business. For any given application, there may not be a threat agent that can perform the relevant attack, or the technical impact may not make any difference. Therefore, you should evaluate each risk for yourself, focusing on the threat agents, security controls, and business impacts in your enterprise. The names of the risks in the Top 10 stem from the type of attack, the type of weakness, or the type of impact they cause. We chose the name that is best known and will achieve the highest level of awareness.
T10
A1 Injection
A2 Broken Authentication and Application functions related to authentication and session management are often not implemented correctly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, session tokens, or Session exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users identities. Management A3 Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
XSS flaws occur whenever an application takes untrusted data and sends it to a web browser without proper validation or escaping. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victims browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites.
A direct object reference occurs when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object, such as a file, directory, or database key. Without an access control check or other protection, attackers can manipulate these references to access unauthorized data.
A5 Security Misconfiguration
Good security requires having a secure configuration defined and deployed for the application, frameworks, application server, web server, database server, and platform. All these settings should be defined, implemented, and maintained as many are not shipped with secure defaults. This includes keeping all software up to date. Many web applications do not properly protect sensitive data, such as credit cards, tax ids, and authentication credentials. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct identity theft, credit card fraud, or other crimes. Sensitive data deserves extra protection such as encryption at rest or in transit, as well as special precautions when exchanged with the browser. Virtually all web applications verify function level access rights before making that functionality visible in the UI. However, applications need to perform the same access control checks on the server when each function is accessed. If requests are not verified, attackers will be able to forge requests in order to access unauthorized functionality.
A7 Missing Function Level Access Control A8 - Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) A9 - Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities A10 Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards
A CSRF attack forces a logged-on victims browser to send a forged HTTP request, including the victims session cookie and any other automatically included authentication information, to a vulnerable web application. This allows the attacker to force the victims browser to generate requests the vulnerable application thinks are legitimate requests from the victim.
Vulnerable components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules almost always run with full privilege. So, if exploited, they can cause serious data loss or server takeover. Applications using these vulnerable components may undermine their defenses and enable a range of possible attacks and impacts.
Web applications frequently redirect and forward users to other pages and websites, and use untrusted data to determine the destination pages. Without proper validation, attackers can redirect victims to phishing or malware sites, or use forwards to access unauthorized pages.
A1
Threat Agents
Injection
Attack Vectors Security Weakness Technical Impacts Business Impacts
? Consider anyone who can send untrusted data to the system, including external users, internal users, and administrators.
Exploitability EASY Attacker sends simple text-based attacks that exploit the syntax of the targeted interpreter. Almost any source of data can be an injection vector, including internal sources.
Prevalence COMMON
Detectability AVERAGE
Impact SEVERE Injection can result in data loss or corruption, lack of accountability, or denial of access. Injection can sometimes lead to complete host takeover.
? Consider the business value of the affected data and the platform running the interpreter. All data could be stolen, modified, or deleted. Could your reputation be harmed?
Injection flaws occur when an application sends untrusted data to an interpreter. Injection flaws are very prevalent, particularly in legacy code. They are often found in SQL, LDAP, or XPath queries, OS commands, XML parsers, program arguments, etc. Injection flaws are easy to discover when examining code, but more difficult via testing. Scanners and fuzzers can help attackers find them.
Am I Vulnerable To Injection?
The best way to find out if an application is vulnerable to injection is to verify that all use of interpreters clearly separates untrusted data from the command or query. For SQL calls, this means using bind variables in all prepared statements and stored procedures, and avoiding dynamic queries. Checking the code is a fast and accurate way to see if the application uses interpreters safely. Code analysis tools can help a security analyst find the use of interpreters and trace the data flow through the application. Penetration testers can validate these issues by crafting exploits that confirm the vulnerability. Automated dynamic scanning which exercises the application may provide insight into whether some exploitable injection flaws exist. Scanners cannot always reach interpreters and have difficulty detecting whether an attack was successful. Poor error handling makes injection flaws easier to discover.
2.
3.
References
OWASP
OWASP SQL Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet OWASP Query Parameterization Cheat Sheet OWASP Command Injection Article OWASP XML eXternal Entity (XXE) Reference Article ASVS: Output Encoding/Escaping Requirements (V6) OWASP Testing Guide: Chapter on SQL Injection Testing
External
CWE Entry 77 on Command Injection CWE Entry 89 on SQL Injection CWE Entry 564 on Hibernate Injection
A2
Threat Agents
? Consider anonymous external attackers, as well as users with their own accounts, who may attempt to steal accounts from others. Also consider insiders wanting to disguise their actions.
Exploitability AVERAGE Attacker uses leaks or flaws in the authentication or session management functions (e.g., exposed accounts, passwords, session IDs) to impersonate users.
Prevalence WIDESPREAD
Detectability AVERAGE
Impact SEVERE Such flaws may allow some or even all accounts to be attacked. Once successful, the attacker can do anything the victim could do. Privileged accounts are frequently targeted.
? Consider the business value of the affected data or application functions. Also consider the business impact of public exposure of the vulnerability.
Developers frequently build custom authentication and session management schemes, but building these correctly is hard. As a result, these custom schemes frequently have flaws in areas such as logout, password management, timeouts, remember me, secret question, account update, etc. Finding such flaws can sometimes be difficult, as each implementation is unique.
Am I Vulnerable to Hijacking?
The primary assets to protect are credentials and session IDs. 1. Are credentials always protected when stored using hashing or encryption? See A6.
2.
Can credentials be guessed or overwritten through weak account management functions (e.g., account creation, change password, recover password, weak session IDs)?
Are session IDs exposed in the URL (e.g., URL rewriting)? Are session IDs vulnerable to session fixation attacks? Do session IDs timeout and can users log out? Are session IDs rotated after successful login? Are passwords, session IDs, and other credentials sent only over TLS connections? See A6. 2.
3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
b) have a simple interface for developers. Consider the ESAPI Authenticator and User APIs as good examples to emulate, use, or build upon. Strong efforts should also be made to avoid XSS flaws which can be used to steal session IDs. See A3.
References
OWASP
For a more complete set of requirements and problems to avoid in this area, see the ASVS requirements areas for Authentication (V2) and Session Management (V3). OWASP Authentication Cheat Sheet OWASP Forgot Password Cheat Sheet OWASP Session Management Cheat Sheet OWASP Development Guide: Chapter on Authentication OWASP Testing Guide: Chapter on Authentication
External
CWE Entry 287 on Improper Authentication CWE Entry 384 on Session Fixation
A3
Threat Agents
?
Consider anyone who can send untrusted data to the system, including external users, internal users, and administrators.
Exploitability AVERAGE Attacker sends textbased attack scripts that exploit the interpreter in the browser. Almost any source of data can be an attack vector, including internal sources such as data from the database.
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE Attackers can execute scripts in a victims browser to hijack user sessions, deface web sites, insert hostile content, redirect users, hijack the users browser using malware, etc.
?
Consider the business value of the affected system and all the data it processes. Also consider the business impact of public exposure of the vulnerability.
XSS is the most prevalent web application security flaw. XSS flaws occur when an application includes user supplied data in a page sent to the browser without properly validating or escaping that content. There are three known types of XSS flaws: 1) Stored, 2) Reflected, and 3) DOM based XSS.
Detection of most XSS flaws is fairly easy via testing or code analysis.
Am I Vulnerable to XSS?
You need to ensure that all user supplied input sent back to the browser is properly escaped before it is included in the output page, or it is verified to be safe via input validation. Proper output encoding ensures that such input is always treated as text in the browser, rather than active content. If AJAX is being used to dynamically update the page, you should try to use safe JavaScript APIs. For unsafe JavaScript APIs, encoding or validation must be used. Automated tools can find some XSS problems automatically. However, each application builds output pages differently and uses different browser side interpreters such as JavaScript, ActiveX, Flash, and Silverlight, which makes automated detection difficult. Therefore, complete coverage requires a combination of manual code review and pen testing, in addition to automated approaches. Web 2.0 technologies, such as AJAX, make XSS much more difficult to detect via automated tools.
2.
3.
References
OWASP
OWASP XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet OWASP DOM based XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet OWASP Cross-Site Scripting Article ESAPI Encoder API ASVS: Output Encoding/Escaping Requirements (V6) OWASP AntiSamy: Sanitization Library
This causes the victims session ID to be sent to the attackers website, allowing the attacker to hijack the users current session.
Note that attackers can also use XSS to defeat any automated CSRF defense the application might employ. See A8 for info on CSRF.
External
CWE Entry 79 on Cross-Site Scripting
A4
Threat Agents
? Consider the types of users of your system. Do any users have only partial access to certain types of system data?
Exploitability EASY Attacker, who is an authorized system user, simply changes a parameter value that directly refers to a system object to another object the user isnt authorized for. Is access granted?
Prevalence COMMON
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE Such flaws can compromise all the data that can be referenced by the parameter. Unless the name space is sparse, its easy for an attacker to access all available data of that type.
? Consider the business value of the exposed data. Also consider the business impact of public exposure of the vulnerability.
Applications frequently use the actual name or key of an object when generating web pages. Applications dont always verify the user is authorized for the target object. This results in an insecure direct object reference flaw. Testers can easily manipulate parameter values to detect such flaws and code analysis quickly shows whether authorization is properly verified.
Am I Vulnerable?
The best way to find out if an application is vulnerable to insecure direct object references is to verify that all object references have appropriate defenses. To achieve this, consider: 1. For direct references to restricted resources, the application needs to verify the user is authorized to access the exact resource they have requested. If the reference is an indirect reference, the mapping to the direct reference must be limited to values authorized for the current user.
2.
Code review of the application can quickly verify whether either approach is implemented safely. Testing is also effective for identifying direct object references and whether they are safe. Automated tools typically do not look for such flaws because they cannot recognize what requires protection or what is safe or unsafe.
2.
References
OWASP
OWASP Top 10-2007 on Insecure Dir Object References ESAPI Access Reference Map API ESAPI Access Control API (See isAuthorizedForData(),
isAuthorizedForFile(), isAuthorizedForFunction() )
For additional access control requirements, see the ASVS requirements area for Access Control (V4).
External
CWE Entry 639 on Insecure Direct Object References CWE Entry 22 on Path Traversal (which is an example of a Direct
Object Reference attack)
A5
Threat Agents
Security Misconfiguration
Attack Vectors Security Weakness Technical Impacts Business Impacts
? Consider anonymous external attackers as well as users with their own accounts that may attempt to compromise the system. Also consider insiders wanting to disguise their actions.
Exploitability EASY Attacker accesses default accounts, unused pages, unpatched flaws, unprotected files and directories, etc. to gain unauthorized access to or knowledge of the system.
Prevalence COMMON
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE Such flaws frequently give attackers unauthorized access to some system data or functionality. Occasionally, such flaws result in a complete system compromise.
? The system could be completely compromised without you knowing it. All your data could be stolen or modified slowly over time. Recovery costs could be expensive.
Security misconfiguration can happen at any level of an application stack, including the platform, web server, application server, framework, and custom code. Developers and network administrators need to work together to ensure that the entire stack is configured properly. Automated scanners are useful for detecting missing patches, misconfigurations, use of default accounts, unnecessary services, etc.
Am I Vulnerable to Attack?
Have you performed the proper security hardening across the entire application stack? 1. Do you have a process for keeping all your software up to date? This includes the OS, Web/App Server, DBMS, applications, and all code libraries (see new A9). 2. Is everything unnecessary disabled, removed, or not installed (e.g. ports, services, pages, accounts, privileges)? 3. Are default account passwords changed or disabled? 4. Is your error handling set up to prevent stack traces and other overly informative error messages from leaking? 5. Are the security settings in your development frameworks (e.g., Struts, Spring, ASP.NET) and libraries understood and configured properly? A concerted, repeatable process is required to develop and maintain a proper application security configuration.
2.
3. 4.
References
OWASP
OWASP Development Guide: Chapter on Configuration OWASP Code Review Guide: Chapter on Error Handling OWASP Testing Guide: Configuration Management OWASP Testing Guide: Testing for Error Codes OWASP Top 10 2004 - Insecure Configuration Management For additional requirements in this area, see the ASVS requirements area for Security Configuration (V12).
External
PC Magazine Article on Web Server Hardening CWE Entry 2 on Environmental Security Flaws CIS Security Configuration Guides/Benchmarks
A6
Threat Agents
? Consider who can gain access to your sensitive data and any backups of that data. This includes the data at rest, in transit, and even in your customers browsers. Include both external and internal threats.
Exploitability DIFFICULT Attackers typically dont break crypto directly. They break something else, such as steal keys, do a man-in-themiddle attack, steal clear text data off the server, steal it in transit, or right from the browser.
Prevalence UNCOMMON
Detectability AVERAGE
Impact SEVERE Failure frequently compromises all data that should have been protected. Typically this information includes sensitive data such as health records, credentials, personal data, credit cards, etc.
? Consider the business value of the lost data and impact to your reputation. What is your legal liability if this data is exposed? Also consider the damage to your reputation.
The most common flaw is simply not encrypting sensitive data. When crypto is employed, weak key generation and management, and weak algorithm usage is common, particularly weak hashing solutions to protect passwords. Browser weaknesses are very common and easy to detect, but hard to exploit. External attackers have difficulty detecting most of these types of flaws due to limited access and they are also usually hard to exploit.
2. 3. 4.
And more For a more complete set of problems to avoid, see ASVS areas Crypto (V7), Data Prot. (V9), and SSL (V10)
5.
References
OWASP - For a more complete set of requirements, see
OWASP Cryptographic Storage Cheat Sheet OWASP Password Storage Cheat Sheet OWASP Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet OWASP Testing Guide: Chapter on SSL/TLS Testing ASVS reqts on Cryptography (V7), Data Protection (V9) and Communications Security (V10)
External
CWE Entry 310 on Cryptographic Issues CWE Entry 312 on Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information CWE Entry 319 on Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information CWE Entry 326 on Weak Encryption
A7
y
Threat Agents
? Anyone with network access can send your application a request. Could anonymous users access private functionality or regular users a privileged function?
Exploitability EASY Attacker, who is an authorized system user, simply changes the URL or a parameter to a privileged function. Is access granted? Anonymous users could access private functions that arent protected.
Prevalence COMMON
Detectability AVERAGE
Impact MODERATE Such flaws allow attackers to access unauthorized functionality. Administrative functions are key targets for this type of attack.
? Consider the business value of the exposed functions and the data they process. Also consider the impact to your reputation if this vulnerability became public.
Applications do not always protect application functions properly. Sometimes, function level protection is managed via configuration, and the system is misconfigured. Sometimes, developers must include the proper code checks, and they forget. Detecting such flaws is easy. The hardest part is identifying which pages (URLs) or functions exist to attack.
Using a proxy, browse your application with a privileged role. Then revisit restricted pages while logged in as a less privileged role. Some proxies support this type of analysis. You can also check the access control implementation in the code. Try following a single privileged request through the code and verifying the authorization pattern. Then search to ensure that the pattern is followed throughout. Automated tools are unlikely to find these problems.
3.
NOTE: Most web applications dont display links and buttons to unauthorized functions, but this presentation layer access control doesnt actually provide protection. You must also implement checks in the controller or business logic.
References
OWASP
OWASP Top 10-2007 on Failure to Restrict URL Access
External
CWE Entry 285 on Improper Access Control (Authorization)
A8
Threat Agents
? Consider anyone who can load content into your users browsers, and thus force them to submit a request to your website. Any website or other HTML feed that your users access could do this.
Exploitability AVERAGE Attacker creates forged HTTP requests and tricks a victim into submitting them via image tags, XSS, or numerous other techniques. If the user is authenticated, the attack succeeds.
Prevalence COMMON
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE Attackers can cause victims to change any data the victim is allowed to change or perform any other function the victim is authorized to use, including state changing requests, like logout or even login.
? Consider the business value of the affected data or application functions. Imagine not being sure if users intended to take these actions. Consider the impact to your reputation.
CSRF takes advantage of the fact that most web apps allow attackers to predict all the details of a particular action. Since browsers send credentials like session cookies automatically, attackers can create malicious web pages which generate forged requests that are indistinguishable from legitimate ones. Detection of CSRF flaws is fairly easy via penetration testing or code analysis.
Am I Vulnerable to CSRF?
To check whether an application is vulnerable, see if each link and form includes an unpredictable token. Without such a token, attackers can forge malicious requests. An alternate defense is to require the user to prove they intended to submit the request, either through reauthentication, or some other proof they are a real user (e.g., a CAPTCHA). Focus on the links and forms that invoke state-changing functions, since those are the most important CSRF targets. You should check multistep transactions, as they are not inherently immune. Attackers can easily forge a series of requests by using multiple tags or possibly JavaScript. Note that session cookies, source IP addresses, and other information automatically sent by the browser doesnt count since this information is also included in forged requests. OWASPs CSRF Tester tool can help generate test cases to demonstrate the dangers of CSRF flaws.
2.
OWASPs CSRF Guard can automatically include such tokens in Java EE, .NET, or PHP apps. OWASPs ESAPI includes CSRF methods developers can use to prevent such vulnerabilities. 3. Requiring the user to reauthenticate, or prove they are a user (e.g., via a CAPTCHA) can also protect against CSRF.
References
OWASP
OWASP CSRF Article OWASP CSRF Prevention Cheat Sheet OWASP CSRFGuard - CSRF Defense Tool ESAPI Project Home Page ESAPI HTTPUtilities Class with AntiCSRF Tokens OWASP Testing Guide: Chapter on CSRF Testing OWASP CSRFTester - CSRF Testing Tool
External
CWE Entry 352 on CSRF
A9
Threat Agents
? Some vulnerable components (e.g., framework libraries) can be identified and exploited with automated tools, expanding the threat agent pool beyond targeted attackers to include chaotic actors.
Exploitability AVERAGE Attacker identifies a weak component through scanning or manual analysis. They customize the exploit as needed and execute the attack. It gets more difficult if the used component is deep in the application.
Prevalence WIDESPREAD
Detectability DIFFICULT
Impact MODERATE The full range of weaknesses is possible, including injection, broken access control, XSS, etc. The impact could be minimal, up to complete host takeover and data compromise.
? Consider what each vulnerability might mean for the business controlled by the affected application. It could be trivial or it could mean complete compromise.
Virtually every application has these issues because most development teams dont focus on ensuring their components stay up to date. In many cases, the developers dont even know all the components they are using, never mind their versions. Component dependencies make things even worse.
References
OWASP
None
External
The Unfortunate Reality of Insecure Libraries Open Source Software Security Addressing Security Concerns in Open Source Components
Spring Remote Code Execution Abuse of the Expression Language implementation in Spring allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code, effectively taking over the server.
Every application using either of these vulnerable libraries is vulnerable to attack as both of these components are directly accessible by application users. Other vulnerable libraries, used deeper in an application, may be harder to exploit.
A10
Threat Agents
? Consider anyone who can trick your users into submitting a request to your website. Any website or other HTML feed that your users use could do this.
Exploitability AVERAGE Attacker links to unvalidated redirect and tricks victims into clicking it. Victims are more likely to click on it, since the link is to a valid site. Attacker targets unsafe forward to bypass security checks.
Prevalence UNCOMMON
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE Such redirects may attempt to install malware or trick victims into disclosing passwords or other sensitive information. Unsafe forwards may allow access control bypass.
Applications frequently redirect users to other pages, or use internal forwards in a similar manner. Sometimes the target page is specified in an unvalidated parameter, allowing attackers to choose the destination page. Detecting unchecked redirects is easy. Look for redirects where you can set the full URL. Unchecked forwards are harder, since they target internal pages.
Am I Vulnerable to Redirection?
The best way to find out if an application has any unvalidated redirects or forwards is to: 1. Review the code for all uses of redirect or forward (called a transfer in .NET). For each use, identify if the target URL is included in any parameter values. If so, verify the parameter(s) are validated to contain only an allowed destination, or element of a destination. Also, spider the site to see if it generates any redirects (HTTP response codes 300-307, typically 302). Look at the parameters supplied prior to the redirect to see if they appear to be a target URL or a piece of such a URL. If so, change the URL target and observe whether the site redirects to the new target. If code is unavailable, check all parameters to see if they look like part of a redirect or forward URL destination and test those that do.
2.
3.
If used, dont involve user parameters in calculating the destination. This can usually be done.
If destination parameters cant be avoided, ensure that the supplied value is valid, and authorized for the user. It is recommended that any such destination parameters be a mapping value, rather than the actual URL or portion of the URL, and that server side code translate this mapping to the target URL. Applications can use ESAPI to override the sendRedirect() method to make sure all redirect destinations are safe.
2.
3.
Avoiding such flaws is extremely important as they are a favorite target of phishers trying to gain the users trust.
References
OWASP
OWASP Article on Open Redirects ESAPI SecurityWrapperResponse sendRedirect() method
External
CWE Entry 601 on Open Redirects WASC Article on URL Redirector Abuse Google blog article on the dangers of open redirects OWASP Top 10 for .NET article on Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards
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To produce a secure web application, you must define what secure means for that application. OWASP recommends you use the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), as a guide for setting the security requirements for your application(s). If youre outsourcing, consider the OWASP Secure Software Contract Annex.
Rather than retrofitting security into your applications, it is far more cost effective to design the security in from the start. OWASP recommends the OWASP Developers Guide, and the OWASP Prevention Cheat Sheets as good starting points for guidance on how to design security in from the beginning.
Building strong and usable security controls is exceptionally difficult. Providing developers with a set of standard security controls radically simplifies the development of secure applications. OWASP recommends the OWASP Enterprise Security API (ESAPI) project as a model for the security APIs needed to produce secure web applications. ESAPI provides reference implementations in Java, .NET, PHP, Classic ASP, Python, and Cold Fusion.
To improve the process your organization follows when building such applications, OWASP recommends the OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM). This model helps organizations formulate and implement a strategy for software security that is tailored to the specific risks facing their organization.
The OWASP Education Project provides training materials to help educate developers on web application security and has compiled a large list of OWASP Educational Presentations. For hands-on learning about vulnerabilities, try OWASP WebGoat, WebGoat.NET, or the OWASP Broken Web Applications Project. To stay current, come to an OWASP AppSec Conference, OWASP Conference Training, or local OWASP Chapter meetings.
There are numerous additional OWASP resources available for your use. Please visit the OWASP Projects page, which lists all of the OWASP projects, organized by the release quality of the projects in question (Release Quality, Beta, or Alpha). Most OWASP resources are available on our wiki, and many OWASP documents can be ordered in hardcopy.
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Get Organized
To verify the security of a web application you have developed, or one you are considering purchasing, OWASP recommends that you review the applications code (if available), and test the application as well. OWASP recommends a combination of securit y code review and application penetration testing whenever possible, as that allows you to leverage the strengths of both techniques, and the two approaches complement each other. Tools for assisting the verification process can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an expert analyst. OWASPs assessment tools are focused on helping an expert become more effective, rather than trying to automate the analysis process itself.
Standardizing How You Verify Web Application Security: To help organizations develop consistency and a defined level of rigor when assessing the security of web applications, OWASP has produced the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS). This document defines a minimum verification standard for performing web application security assessments. OWASP recommends that you use the ASVS as guidance for not only what to look for when verifying the security of a web application, but also which techniques are most appropriate to use, and to help you define and select a level of rigor when verifying the security of a web application. OWASP also recommends you use the ASVS to help define and select any web application assessment services you might procure from a third party provider.
Assessment Tools Suite: The OWASP Live CD Project has pulled together some of the best open source security tools into a single bootable environment. Web developers, testers, and security professionals can boot from this Live CD and immediately have access to a full security testing suite. No installation or configuration is required to use the tools provided on this CD.
Code Review
Reviewing the code is the strongest way to verify whether an application is secure. Testing can only prove that an application is insecure. Reviewing the Code: As a companion to the OWASP Developers Guide, and the OWASP Testing Guide, OWASP has produced the OWASP Code Review Guide to help developers and application security specialists understand how to efficiently and effectively review a web application for security by reviewing the code. There are numerous web application security issues, such as Injection Flaws, that are far easier to find through code review, than external testing. Code Review Tools: OWASP has been doing some promising work in the area of assisting experts in performing code analysis, but these tools are still in their early stages. The authors of these tools use them every day when performing their security code reviews, but non-experts may find these tools a bit difficult to use. These include CodeCrawler, Orizon, and O2. Only O2 has been under active development during the past three years. There are other free, open source, code review tools. The most promising is FindBugs, and its new security focused plugin called: FindSecurityBugs, both of which are for Java.
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Get Started
Identify and prioritize your application portfolio from an inherent risk perspective. Create an application risk profiling model to measure and prioritize the applications in your portfolio. Establish assurance guidelines to properly define coverage and level of rigor required. Establish a common risk rating model with a consistent set of likelihood and impact factors reflective of your organization's tolerance for risk.
Establish a set of focused policies and standards that provide an application security baseline for all development teams to adhere to. Define a common set of reusable security controls that complement these policies and standards and provide design and development guidance on their use. Establish an application security training curriculum that is required and targeted to different development roles and topics.
Define and integrate security implementation and verification activities into existing development and operational processes. Activities include Threat Modeling, Secure Design & Review, Secure Coding & Code Review, Pen Testing, Remediation, etc. Provide subject matter experts and support services for development and project teams to be successful.
Manage with metrics. Drive improvement and funding decisions based on the metrics and analysis data captured. Metrics include adherence to security practices / activities, vulnerabilities introduced, vulenerabilities mitigated, application coverage, etc. Analyze data from the implementation and verification activities to look for root cause and vulnerability patterns to drive strategic and systemic improvements across the enterprise.
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The Risk Rating methodology for the Top 10 is based on the OWASP Risk Rating Methodology. For each Top 10 item, we estimated the typical risk that each weakness introduces to a typical web application by looking at common likelihood factors and impact factors for each common weakness. We then rank ordered the Top 10 according to those weaknesses that typically introduce the most significant risk to an application.
The OWASP Risk Rating Methodology defines numerous factors to help calculate the risk of an identified vulnerability. However, the Top 10 must talk about generalities, rather than specific vulnerabilities in real applications. Consequently, we can never be as precise as a system owner can when calculating risk for their application(s). We dont know how important your applications a nd data are, what your threat agents are, nor how your system has been built and is being operated. Our methodology includes 3 likelihood factors for each weakness (prevalence, detectability, and ease of exploit) and one impact factor (technical impact). The prevalence of a weakness is a factor that you typically dont have to calculate. For prevalence data, we have been supplied prevalence statistics from a number of different organizations and we have averaged their data together to come up with a Top 10 likelihood of existence list by prevalence. This data was then combined with the other two likelihood factors (detectability and ease of exploit) to calculate a likelihood rating for each weakness. This was then multiplied by our estimated average technical impact for each item to come up with an overall risk ranking for each item in the Top 10. Note that this approach does not take the likelihood of the threat agent into account. Nor does it account for any of the various technical details associated with your particular application. Any of these factors could significantly affect the overall likelihood of an attacker finding and exploiting a particular vulnerability. This rating also does not take into account the actual impact on your business. Your organization will have to decide how much security risk from applications the organization is willing to accept. The purpose of the OWASP Top 10 is not to do this risk analysis for you. The following illustrates our calculation of the risk for A3: Cross-Site Scripting, as an example. Note that XSS is so prevalent that it warranted the only VERY WIDESPREAD prevalence value. All other risks ranged from widespread to uncommon (values 1 to 3).
Attack Vectors Security Weakness Technical Impacts Business Impacts
Threat Agents
Exploitability AVERAGE
Detectability EASY
Impact MODERATE
*
2
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RISK
A1-Injection A2-Authn A3-XSS A4-Insecure DOR A5-Config A6-Sens. Data A7-Function Acc. A8-CSRF
Threat Agents
Business Impacts
A9-Components
A10-Redirects
AVERAGE
AVERAGE
WIDESPREAD
UNCOMMON
DIFFICULT
EASY
MODERATE
MODERATE